Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Point and shoot garden...

You can tell that it shan't be an "ordinary" garden when you see Geranium x cantabrigense 'Biokovo' tucked between the roots of a tree on the street. By the way, I call this a "point and shoot garden" because it is: most of my blogs I have to do a lot of trimming and framing shots--but not this one: I just uploaded all my pix (removed a few duplicates) and what you see is what I shot in the same sequential order at one of three gardens I saw the Friday before the North American Rock Garden Society's "Gala" Study weekend last week, I knew I was in for a treat...

I believe the Garden is a half acre (more or less--with only a tiny pad of bluegrass out front as a nod to convention). Instead, every square inch that wasn't pathway consisted of elegant sweeps of various perennial groundcovers--all perfectly grown and combined artistically with an Oriental flare...

A lovely sedge I didn't recognize used effectively,

More sedges...I love these graminoids!

I suspect you could identify the plants as well as myself...and although the garden contains a magnificent collection of perennials, it's really a garden about texture and views. So I shall be mum for most of this post and let the garden speak for itself (it's very voluble in verdure!)....Oh yes: there's some wonderful garden art along the way, that hardly needs commentary either. So enjoy! With only the occasional murmur from my singular Greek Chorus.

We just missed seeing this in bloom: it must have been a wonderful show of Iris cristata.

This means "exit" in Chinese--just in case you wondered (my eight years of study of the language should come in handy SOME times).

Wonderful chains of samaras on this mystery maple

And even a huge flowered ladyslipper--a hybrid (from Frosch perhaps?)....

Frank Cooper is an extraordinary gardener from Urbana, Illinois. We've known each other a long time and he let me hitch a ride on the Friday pre-tours. I love this picture of him. I'm dying to see his home garden, which he often posts on Facebook: some day perhaps I'll blog about HIS!

Here Linda is walking ahead of Frank. We were lucky to have the host/designers show us around. Linda and Mark both have a hand in the Garden and both obviously enjoy it enormously. They had fabulous anecdotes about its origins and development that would make a compelling book. It's worth joining NARGS just to meet people like them!

What better way to end than this rather emphatic and very functional sculpture. Thanks for joining us on our stroll!

Since I can’t seem to find an email address for you, I am leaving you this message as a comment instead.

First, thank you so much for this lovely blog post about our garden and for such a generous display of images. We both enjoyed seeing our garden through your eyes! And we both saw images where we had to think a bit to figure out where you were in the garden.

It was such a pleasure to meet you and chat even if for a brief time. I have actually been reading your blog for quite a while, just lurking and not commenting.

As for a couple of things you mention in the post, those Carexes in the beginning are C. plantaginea (seersucker sedge) and C. rosea (the fine one).

The garden is a half-acre as you mention and that grass under the Bur Oak tree is our “oak savanna.” Currently under discussion as to whether it too should get planted.

The rusty circles are industrial saw blades that Mark got from another artist who had used them in a project. Mark painted "Ich Liebe Dich" on them with rust inhibitor and hung them on the fence at our first garden while I was off at art camp with a girlfriend. I always say that he is clearly a guy who knows his wife very well and knew she would come home and be charmed by this “love letter.”

And you are the only garden visitor in 20 years who knew what the sign on the gate said! We saw it on a sign in the Chinese scholar’s rooms at the Met and wrote it down thinking someday we might be able to use it in the garden.